


All I want for Beltane

by freddiejoey



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:18:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddiejoey/pseuds/freddiejoey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Dark Age Valentine</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I want for Beltane

I cannot afford to forget – even after a decade of marriage and three children – especially

after I should say. It is Beltane today – the time, in fact, the day of the year, that Lenni

claims she first fell in love with me. Well, she couldn’t have chosen a better season.

Beltane celebrates the arrival of the fire and the light after so many months of cold and

darkness. It acclaims the height of spring, the coming of summer, and the flowering of life.

Trees are budding, spring flowers blooming , birds singing as they build their nests. All

around the village are symbols of fertility, growth and warmth. It is the perfect time to

celebrate the greening of the earth and Beltane is about nothing more than consummation. So

tonight, in the high meadow, the great bonfire will be lit and couples will pair off, leap

through the flames and then slip into the woods until dawn………….

 

Traditionally women receive gifts at Beltane and I have been long prepared with a scarlet

woollen mantle for Lenni. But early in the afternoon as we look over the horses in the

stable, before they are sent out to their summer pasturage, I casually ask Arthur what he has

ready for Rowena. “Oh fuck…….” is the response as I already knew it would be. (no doubt one

of the only two or three times I will hear him use profanities until next year’s Beltane).

Nine years with his Jutish spitting cat and two children notwithstanding, my little brother

is both hopeless and helpless at some things. So helpfully I fish a pair of gold and

carnelian earrings from my tunic pouch. Arthur’s resultant smile is brighter than any

Beltane fire. Many brothers I suppose would be grateful for such a gesture – not many though

would express their gratitude with quite this sort of kiss…………So that, after he is gone back

to the longhouse, I have to sit down on a hay bale for a few minutes – no actually quite a

bit longer – until my knees are fit to carry me again. Just as a few days ago, I teased

Arthur about the fact that he has his first grey hair and was playfully cuffed for my

troubles. Nothing unusual about such brotherly banter you might think – except that the grey

hair ( even imaginary as it happened to be) was nowhere near his head…………

 

By the time I finish in the stables and wander outside, the longhouse doors are barred and

Lenni has acquired Kaitlin and Luc, so it seems that Rowena was suitably impressed with the

earrings………. Then Lenni proves just as highly appreciative of the mantle which is equally

very very nice……. - and so I convince Leesa that five extra children, added to her own two

for a few hours, will be no burden at all. Leesa’s husband is away scouting so his Beltane

welcome will have to wait for a week or so (although I know from experience just how

enthusiastic and, shall we say, inventive it will actually be when he returns).

 

As darkness falls, the villagers make their way excitedly up to the meadow where the bonfire

is already blazing. I know that Arthur has been out with a work party for the last few

hours, ensuring that there are adequate quantities of birch and oak, hazel and rowan. And now

I am impatient to find him because there is a certain matter I am quite anxious to discuss……

Llud and Olwen appear hand –in-hand and Lenni hurries up to them, happily wrapped in her new

scarlet finery (in truth it is too warm for such a cloak at this time of year but Beltane is

no day for logic). Rowena is walking around smiling as if she has been bewitched, carnelian

earrings jauntily swinging from her lobes. She displays them proudly to Esla who is waddling

again these days, huge with her umpteenth child. You would think that age would be wearying

the trader but the man seems insatiable.

 

Once the festivities begin, I am kept busy helping Arthur to oversee the proceedings - and

even busier shepherding children safely away from the fire while balancing a squirming Maeve

on my hip. There is loud jubilant eating and drinking, drumming and dancing. But as the

formalities are concluded, I start thinking again of the anticipations I have been harbouring

for most of the day………anticipating that when the bonfires have begun waning and most of the

villagers are otherwise pleasurably occupied, that I will claim my little brother and we can

put our own stamp on Beltane so to speak.

 

Yet when I at last have an opportunity to seek him out, I simply become increasingly anxious

to find Arthur since he seems to have utterly vanished. Lenni and Rowena are guiding their

sleepy tribe back to the longhouse. I spy Llud and Olwen scampering off into the darkness

like a pair of lustful squirrels. But still no Arthur. Then I feel a tap on my shoulder.

It is one of the young stable boys, grinning and clasping the waist of Olwen’s pretty

chestnut-haired daughter. “Kai, you’re needed in the stables to check on a feverish horse” –

and he runs off laughing with Arial. ( And yes, there will be a result there nine months and

a day later).

 

“Fucking hell.” – although I only murmur it to myself. This is not at all how I imagined

spending Beltane night. But, as Arthur has always said, a man on a horse is worth ten on

foot. So I duly tramp over to the stables, gritting my teeth. Inside everything is quiet and

warm, all the horses look hale and hearty and in fact, apart from them, there is no-one else

here………What? Then I notice that nailed to one of the posts is a small square of parchment

with a scrawled message and a rough drawing on it. “Follow the trail” it reads. Which

bloody trail? To where?

 

The drawing I interpret to be a very dubious likeness of a dog. But in for a denarius as

they say……Thus, muttering crossly, I stride over to the kennels. Here I am greeted by a

chorus of hopeful barking and a copious amount of tail-wagging – and another note tucked into

the collar of my favourite hunting hound Gilbert. “Feeling penitent?” it enquires,

accompanied by a rough sketch of a conical hut…... Now at last I break into an elated grin,

thinking of a certain visit to Rolf’s village some years ago and certain activities

undertaken in the guest hut we had evicted him from…..

 

Suddenly my feet are too clumsy to carry me swiftly enough up the slope to the guest

quarters. In the darkness I stumble over more than one wooing Beltane couple and frantically

apologise. Finally I blunder up to my destination and notice that welcoming fire light is

glimmering through chinks in the wicker walls.

 

Quietly I step inside and bar the door. Oh, I have guessed so thankfully, gloriously

right…..The room is flower wreathed and blazes with a multitude of fragrant candles, musk and

lavender. There is warm mead and a bed piled with the softest sheepskins, newly bleached on

the riverbank. And standing, smiling, in the midst of all this wonder, gleaming with

perfumed rose oil and clad in nothing but his Beltane suit, is my beautiful little brother………


End file.
